Graham Stuart
MP for Beverley and Holderness · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I hope and expect that we can move forward in the right way and get the balance right between being overly prescriptive to the banking industry and setting a clear sense of direction to make sure that no one is left behind, as so many Members have set out.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wishart. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing this debate.”
“Is my hon. Friend as astonished as I am that the Minister—I know she is new to her post—has come here to propose a six-month extension of the movement of costs from bills to the Exchequer and cannot tell the Committee how much money that will cost?”
“The Minister is being most generous again. I did not ask her about protecting consumers from energy price shocks; I asked about a clear, unequivocal manifesto pledge to reduce household energy bills by £300. She, like her predecessors, refuses to address it directly. It was a clear promise.”
“Banking hubs themselves came out of an industry response from the NatWest executive. Does the Minister agree that we must present the information from the Lloyd review to the banking groups, be clear about what we want, and give them the opportunity to respond and provide a solution, as they did with banking hubs, so that we can perhaps a…”
“I am pleased to say that Lloyds listened and, as of this morning, people can deposit cheques at those places. These issues being raised by Members across the House today are important. I trust that given the timing of the Richard Lloyd report, the Minister in her seat will make sure that they are be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.”
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“I would be happy to talk to the hon. Members for St Helens South and Whiston and for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) and others to see where we can make some common ground on having a more rational system, because at the end of all this, the complexity and lack of transparency end up in social failure. As the hon. Lady rightly and passionately says, it is those who are the most vulnerable and the least able who pay the highest price, and whether that is in her part of the world or in mine, that is not acceptable. We have all come here to make it a better place, and one of the things we need to fix is this.”
“Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) rightly identified 800 of them—for the constituents in the deprived areas of the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) and in mine, nobody can see the transparency. Perhaps we should look on the Back Benches initially for a cross-party view on building a fairer funding system. There is one more thing, and I do not know why no one has talked about it very much in my 21 years in this place. The fact that a £200,000 house in Beverley pays a lot more council tax than a £2 million flat in central London is absurd, and very rarely does anybody mention it. We need to fix things, but if we cannot fix something as absolutely inexcusable as that—and, collectively, we have not—it is no wonder the public are looking at us so askance.”
“They are delaying and delaying, and as their political potency weakens, it becomes harder and harder to deliver. It is a bit like the police reorganisation we touched on earlier today. It is unlikely to happen in the dribs and drabs of a Government who are struggling. We need a long-term settlement that is based on need. There is no perfect assessment of that, but what we have is complexity, as we heard in the brilliant speech from the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) on the Lib Dem Benches earlier. The system has elements about how many pubs there are and what some level of cost was in 1991 and all sorts of other things. The truth is that, in this most fundamental set of services—my hon.”
“I thank the hon. Lady, who always speaks passionately and with deep knowledge of her community. As she says, she does not make unnecessary party political points. The one thing that unites the House, including the Government Front Bench, is a recognition that the funding system is broken. I spent many years campaigning, across different funding pots, on the distribution. Everyone looks at the quantum, but they do not look at the distribution. It is easy to get into a world of complexity, and the number of people who turn up for meetings on distribution gets very small, but it is actually critical. We need a new funding settlement, and how we deliver that, given the political realities, is to go in early and hard. Unfortunately, this Government have not done that.”
“That takes away any idea of the extent of the relationship—the extent of the relationship is as laid out in that report.”
“My hon. Friend is right to look at the process, but I do not think that it provides any cover for the Prime Minister’s decision. If the story in the New Statesman today is true, the Prime Minister was directly sent a report that “clearly stated that Mandelson’s relationship with the paedophile continued after his conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution. It contained links to photographs of Mandelson with the paedophile, and drew particular attention to evidence that Mandelson had stayed at Epstein’s apartment while he was in prison.” Candour has been talked about a lot today. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should hear from the Minister today whether that report in the New Statesman is true and whether the Prime Minister received that report?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister needs to tell us at the Dispatch Box whether the New Statesman report today is true—that the Prime Minister was directly told that Mandelson stayed in Epstein’s flat while he was in prison, and therefore that the extent of that relationship was absolutely clear to the Prime Minister when he made the decision to make that appointment? I know—because I spoke to some of them at the time—that so many Labour Members were uncomfortable but felt obliged to go along with it.”
“My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, grounded as it is in the Nolan principles. Does he agree that if the Prime Minister had appointed someone who went on to breach all the Nolan principles to a position as serious as that of ambassador to the United States, that would be a serious issue to deal with, but the fact is that he appointed a person who had already broken all the Nolan principles before his appointment, as well as doing so after it? I think that makes the Prime Minister’s position untenable.”
“The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. He referred to the speech on factionalism made by his colleague on the Labour Benches, the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), and made the point that we need an independent inquiry. One of the reasons for that is the number of staff from Labour Together, a factional group within the Labour party, who were appointed to civil service posts directly after the general election, including one—Jess Sargeant—who was appointed to the Cabinet Office’s propriety and constitution group. Labour Front Benchers should not say, “Don’t question the impartiality of the civil service.” They undermined the impartiality of the civil service, and we need an independent inquiry if the public are to know that we will get to the truth.”
“The Government tried to stop the full disclosure of documents today. It was primarily Government Members who identified that and said that they would not put up with it, so it is thanks to them that a manuscript amendment has been tabled. However, there may still be a misunderstanding. The hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) said that the ISC would vet documents before they were released, but that is not my understanding. The Committee will get to see them, however inappropriate it is for them to be published to the whole House. Does my right hon. Friend agree that Ministers must set out the principle that not only should documents be referred to the ISC, but should be released, if the ISC agrees that they are not injurious to our security and should be made public?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister should find out—if he does not already know—whether Mandelson was in No. 10 at the time of the last Government reshuffle? Was he involved in the appointment of Ministers on the Treasury Bench? If the Minister can tell us categorically that he was not, that will be a relief to this House.”
“My hon. Friend may have heard the powerful speech by the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) earlier in the day about factionalism in the Labour party. The Prime Minister not only appointed Peter Mandelson to the post of ambassador knowing, as he declared today, what he knew, but he previously brought him in as a strategic adviser, advocate and planner in the 2024 Labour general election campaign. All Labour Members are tainted by that association with Mandelson, which was brought about by the leader of their party, now the Prime Minister, who knew about this matter at the time. That perhaps has not been picked up on as fully as it should have been in today’s debate.”
“Further to that last intervention, we need an assurance that we will have urgency. We have seen victims of child abuse in this country let down by a Government who resisted an inquiry but then agreed to it in a big moment. Today could be a moment like that, when the Government appear to give way, but months then pass with nobody appointed to the inquiry. We need to hear from the Minister that the Government will move with speed to ensure that this information comes out.”
“Before the appointment of Peter Mandelson as our ambassador, he was appointed as a strategic adviser, a consultant, an advocate and a planner for the 2024 Labour party general election campaign. May I suggest that he was appointed—Government Members know this to be true—because he was treacherous, deceitful, a liar and a master manipulator in the political dark arts? That is why the Prime Minister appointed him. There is no defence, is there?”
“I was not here earlier in the debate, so please forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman talked about Members being able to back up their assertions. Who was it in the debate who suggested that the Chancellor did not care? I have never heard anyone on the Opposition side of the House saying that she does not care. Whether she is capable of dealing with it is a different matter entirely, but who was it who said she did not care, because I am sure we would all want to take it up with them and tell them to change their line?”
“The hon. Gentleman is being most generous with his time. I agree with the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince). Does the hon. Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) agree with him that it would be a sign of this Government’s success if we saw fewer food parcels being put out by food banks by the end of this Parliament than we do today?”
“The hon. Lady is, as ever, showing a powerful oratorical style, but it is so easy when doing that to get one’s facts wrong. Unemployment, I am sure she will recognise, was at a near record low when the Conservatives left office and has risen by more than 20% in the less than two years that Labour has run the country. I know the hon. Lady is careful with the facts and will want to retract the point about unemployment under the Conservatives. Whatever other ills she wants to attribute to us, I do not think she can genuinely attribute that.”
“Like my right hon. Friend, I am proud of the role that Conservative peers have played in this, but can we also take a moment to pay credit to Back-Bench Labour MPs? I think it is important to note that they are not here. Practically the only Government Member present, scribbling away, is the hon. Member for Rugby (John Slinger), whom I admire a great deal, but who is loyalist to his very core. If he is the only Member prepared to speak up, the truth is that Labour MPs have voted with their feet, and they now agree with my right hon. Friend that this deal has to go.”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister said that she would address the issue of whether nuclear weapons could go to Diego Garcia, and now she says that she cannot comment. Is that—”
“UKHospitality says that we could be seeing the death of the great British summer job, and even Labour’s own Alan Milburn has warned that there is a long-standing decline in the number of 16 and 17-year-olds getting Saturday jobs. Previous Labour Governments always shoved up youth unemployment, but never before has Labour threatened to destroy the great British summer job. That is much to be regretted, and it is about time that the Government turned around their jobs tax and Employment Rights Bill policies.”
“In my experience, my neighbour is always a fair and credible person, so will she confirm that youth unemployment reduced over the 14 years that the Conservatives were in government, rather than focusing on some selective period over covid in order to give an entirely partisan and biased view of the statistics? The numbers went down, did they not? The only Government who put up youth unemployment by 45% were the last Labour Government.”
“Labour Governments have done this before. I never want to question anyone’s honesty, but some Labour Members have been very selective in the data that they have given. They have talked relentlessly about the 14 years, but not one of them has given youth unemployment figures for those 14 years, which anyone fair-minded would surely do rather than picking some three-year period around covid. The hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) did make a fair statistical point. He said, “OK, youth unemployment has gone up under Labour.” He conceded that: how refreshing. However, he also said that it was going up when we came to power and we should deal with that. It was a fair point and a point well made, but in 1997 youth unemployment stood at 14%, and by 2010, under the socialists—the Labour party—it had climbed to 20%.”
“In that time, she, like me, will have visited hundreds of schools—I certainly have, from Holderness academy to Withernsea high school—and asked thousands of students the same question: “What do you want to be when you leave school?” Not once has a child replied, “Unemployed”, and for good reason. Young people are ambitious. They want the dignity of work, about which my right hon. Friend spoke so passionately just now, over the indignity of welfare. They want to climb a ladder of opportunity, not fall into the trap of dependency. However, as was reflected in the Minister’s speech, study after study tells us the same hard truth. Young people who experience long-term unemployment are more likely to end up poor, sick and more isolated than their peers, with no options and no hope. No way should we be consigning our young people to that fate.”
“It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. How do we, as so many colleagues have asked this afternoon—certainly on the Opposition Benches—persuade an employer? How do we create the incentives for an employer to take a chance on a young person who may have no work experience—they may be full of ambition, fresh ideas and curiosity, but with little or no experience to offer—when that same employer could choose an older candidate who is proven, reliable and familiar with the workplace? If we can answer that question, we will help more than one person; we will help ensure that we provide the door to opportunity for people to have that dignity of work, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) has just talked about. I have been a Member of Parliament for nearly 21 years, along with the Minister.”
“If we understand that behaviour is driven by incentives and we make it much more expensive to employ a young person than to employ someone older, what happens? Well, it is not a surprise: the rate of youth unemployment has gone up. Let me now give way to the hon. Gentleman.”
“I know that Opposition Members lack experience of running businesses—so few of them have ever had to make that huge decision, that risk-filled decision, to employ someone and then to employ more people, having to find the money to pay them at the end of the month as well as paying all the taxes—but the answer is that we do it by changing incentives. As any good economist knows, the single biggest cost for almost any business is its workforce, yet this Chancellor has chosen to increase the minimum wage and so many other costs on business. In turn, the cost of employing 18 to 20 year-olds—just since July 2024—has risen not by £2,000, not by £3,000, but by a staggering £4,095, in less than two years.”
“I will make a little more progress, and then I will happily give way. Given that I have referred to the hon. Gentleman, it is the very least I can do. By 2024, the level had been brought back to below 14%. Again and again, Conservatives have brought youth unemployment down. I have mentioned—as have others, including the Minister—just how damaging it is for young people to be unemployed. It has not just a short-term horrific impact, but a lifelong impact. I do not quite know why that is the case, but study after study shows that it is. Now, less than two years in, the figure is 16% and rising. We have seen this film before, and unless we change course—unless the Government change course—we know how it ends. So how do we change course? I think that Conservative Members have tried to indicate to Opposition Members what the answer might be.”
“They are developing skills, confidence, discipline and the ability to work productively alongside more experienced colleagues. Employers were explicitly permitted to pay less in order to reflect an economic reality.”
“We showed fiscal responsibility, because we know that if Governments spend money that they do not generate, they impose a burden on the very young people on whom unemployment is now being imposed. I will deal with the minimum wage, which Labour Members have touched on. They asked whether we want to tell young people that they are not worth higher pay. Well, if they do not have the experience, and if they lose out on getting a job against an older person because they do not even have cost competitiveness, they are in trouble. Since the introduction of the development rate in 1998, there has been a lower wage for younger workers. That is deliberate, for a very sensible reason: when young people enter the workplace, they are doing exactly that—they are developing.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a fair and reasonable point, but if he goes back and looks through the data, he will see that youth unemployment stayed stubbornly high under the last quasi-socialist Government, and it was not just because of the 2008 crash. The truth is that, throughout that period, we had a much higher level of youth unemployment than we should have done. He says that we had austerity, but the then Government overspent. We inherited a massive deficit and slowly brought it down throughout the 2010s, but we overspent in each and every year, so the idea that we had austerity is a myth. “Austerity” means living within our means, but we did not live within our means. We overspent each and every year, but by the time we got to covid, we had managed to get our deficit right down.”
“We will repeal Labour’s job-destroying Employment Rights Act, because we cannot regulate our way to prosperity. The Act introduced 28 major reforms—count them—placing significant new requirements on businesses. By the Government’s own estimate, it will lead to £5 billion in costs. The planned changes to zero-hours contracts are perhaps the most damaging to young people, because employees will require guaranteed hours and compensation for cancelled shifts. I fully accept that these measures are well-intentioned, but they will reduce the flexibility that employers value, and that young people also value because they can balance their studies with gaining experience. Businesses will hire fewer young workers, leaving a generation without the chance to learn, earn and prove themselves.”
“When those jobs disappear, the ladder does not get longer; it just gets shorter and steeper. A Conservative Government will abolish business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure—not 10% of them, but 100%. Those are the sectors in which so many young people take their first step. Cutting costs gives businesses the freedom to grow and hire, and we do not need a vast number of people to administer a scheme. When we simply lower the costs for employers, they get on with it. That will create real opportunities for young people to learn, earn and prove themselves. Under Labour, businesses face another three years of higher and higher costs, heavier regulation and constant uncertainty, leaving young people blocked, frustrated and struggling to get a foothold in the job market.”
“If the Chancellor changes nothing, we need to change the Chancellor. What would the Conservatives do differently? We would start with a simple truth: jobs are created by employers—by not Ministers, schemes or programmes. Private employers are the ones who generate wealth. The ladder of opportunity is not built by ministerial good intentions; it is built by creating incentives for the behaviours we want. The behaviour we want from employers is for them to take a risk, and to feel that it is worth their while for their family to invest in and give an opportunity to a young person. But under this Government, the first rung of the ladder is being sawn off. Young people do not begin at the top; they begin with a Saturday job or a summer shift, and their first payslip. That is where confidence is built, habits are formed and futures are forged.”
“The effect that the Chancellor has had is the opposite of what she desired, and she is not helping young people. Many have received a short-term pay rise, but hundreds of thousands have received the ultimate kick in the teeth. They have received not a pay cut, but no pay at all, because the jobs they should have been offered have disappeared in a puff of the Chancellor’s smoke. After the Government’s first Budget, a survey by the Beverley and District chamber of trade found that 88% of its members said they would be less likely to employ young people because of the rise in the minimum wage. Despite that warning, the Chancellor returned with a second Budget and destroyed even more opportunities with another £26 billion tax raid. We can but pray that she is out the door before she completes her tax-taking trilogy.”
“I do not doubt the good intentions of the Labour party, the Cabinet and the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham), who I may allow to intervene in a moment, but good intentions do not disguise the truth. They have not run businesses, and it shows. They do not understand how employers make decisions or how behaviour is incentivised. By abolishing the development rate, the Chancellor wanted to signal that she is on the side of young people in order to put in place a political divide: “You Tories don’t want to pay young people a fair and decent wage!” Of course we do, but we want them to have jobs. This is the insider-outsider issue that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) touched on earlier.”
“I hope the hon. Lady will say now on the Floor of the House that if the youth unemployment rate continues to go up, as it did under previous Labour Governments, from the 14% inherited from the Conservatives to 20%—if that were to be the terrible outcome, with its scarring impact on young people—she would not seek to stand for the Labour party at the next election, because she would recognise that she had failed us.”
“The Conservatives will align incentives, cut costs and free businesses to hire—to get the balance right—and in doing so, we will give them the freedom to give young people a chance to prove themselves, because Conservative Governments stand for work, not welfare, and for opportunity, not dependency.”
“The differential has been eroded, but the hon. Lady is quite right to mention that. What we are talking about is balance. None of us is talking about a total free-for-all for employers. We are looking at getting balance, and it looks as though that balance has gone wrong, as the hon. Lady must know. What have been the great external economic shocks over the last year and a half? There have not really been any. There is no reason, other than the policies of this Government, for this increase in youth unemployment, with the loss of nearly 100,000 jobs in hospitality. This is about getting the balance right, and this Government have not done so.”
“My hon. Friend is picking out remarkable contributions to this debate. Was she particularly struck by the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone), who is not in his seat, saying that the Conservatives should apologise for not having any mention in their motion of transport to help young people get to work, when the much longer Liberal Democrat amendment, ironically, has no mention of transport either?”
“Does my hon. Friend look forward to the Minister’s reply, as I do? Youth unemployment has already gone up from 14% to 16%. Does she want to hear from the Minister at the Dispatch Box a commitment that this Government will reduce it back down, so that they can for once end their time in power—in 2029—however short-lived it may have been, with a lower rate of youth unemployment than they started with?”
“The Minister knows that youth unemployment was at 20% when the Conservatives came into power, and at 14% when we left. Can he commit that his Government, with their vast array of programmes, will bring youth unemployment back below the level that his Government inherited? Previous Labour Governments have failed to do that, and shoved up youth unemployment, with all the damage that goes with that. Will his Government ensure that the numbers come down, and if they do not, will the Government put their hands up and admit their failure?”
“In meaningful consultations, the Government set out what they are minded to do and set out a model. This consultation does not define social media or set out an enforcement model. It does not say anything about how age verification should be done. If they do not set out their model and what they intend to do, how at the end of the consultation will they have a practical guide or model to implement? They will not. If we are to follow this up with another consultation, I fear that parents and grandparents in Beverley and Holderness will be deeply disappointed with the dithering and delay displayed by the Secretary of State today.”
“The Minister mentions the United States’ wishes, and he appears to be presenting the case that the United States remains in the position that it was in previously, despite what President Trump said last night. The Deputy Prime Minister said in February: “If President Trump doesn’t like the deal, the deal will not go forward”. Last night, President Trump said that he did not like the deal. Is it still going forward, or is the Minister suggesting that President Trump did not mean what he said last night?”
“Does my right hon. Friend, like me, feel some sympathy for the Minister? He has rested his whole case on the support of the United States of America. The Deputy Prime Minister said that the Bill would not go ahead if the American President did not support it. We all remember the great mystery about who shot J.R., but there is no mystery about who shot the Minister’s fox—it was the President of the United States last night, and the Minister’s whole case has crumbled.”
“The hon. Gentleman is talking about the costs of the deal. Can he just set them out for the House? I do not think anyone has done so in today’s debate so far, and he is speaking with such expertise. It would be great to hear from him exactly what this deal is costing.”
“I fear the Minister may have inadvertently misled the House. The only public statement by the Chinese Government on this subject was on 29 May last year when they welcomed the Chagos deal.”
“Blind and partially sighted children in the East Riding of Yorkshire receive lower funding through the higher needs block than anywhere else in the country, yet in the settlement the East Riding will receive the smallest increase in the country at just 2%, compared with an average of over 6%. How can it possibly be justified that children in the rural, coastal East Riding of Yorkshire, who are already the worst funded in the country, are going to see the gap widen? Minister, please explain.”
“I will call Graham Leadbitter to move the motion, and then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may only make a speech with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister—you need both. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates. We are trying to bring this debate swiftly to a close in order to allow the proposer to reach Scottish questions.”
“To come to the rescue of the Chancellor, it turns out that she simply did not understand the impact, according to the Business Secretary. Perhaps the Minister, in her winding-up speech, will be able to confirm that the Chancellor literally did not know what the impact of her own policies would be on hospitality businesses. The Minister may be able to tell us whether the Business Secretary was right to identify that failing of understanding by the Chancellor.”
“The local government settlement strips £27 million from East Riding of Yorkshire council. I learned today that there will be an additional £21 million cost over the next three years from the minimum wage and the jobs tax. Does the Minister really think it is acceptable that local residents should have sky-high council tax rises and falling quality of services?”